Punks

Sitting here with actinic afterimages smoldering in my retinas, miniscule grains of spent gunpowder lining my air passages down to my lungs, and mosquito bites pebbling my thighs and biceps and forehead, I consider the primitive device I used in another vain attempt to discourage those summer pests--the humble punk, which also doubles as a fireworks igniter, and whose pleasant, slightly rancid odor always evokes memories of past summers in me.

I thought about the lowly punk because John Dos Passos mentions it in the first volume of his U.S.A. trilogy, The 42nd Parallel; according to him, young women walking out on a summer's night at the beginning of the twentieth century would place one in their hair to ward off mosquitoes. I found that fascinating--the same device used over one hundred years later, for much the same purpose. It is a unifying object, linking centuries together, and in my own life, linking decades. (The word "punk" with this denotation derives, it is supposed, from a Native American word, first applied to spongy growths on oaks used for tinder.)

A lot more about U.S.A. to come, but just this thought inspired by a summer night with fireworks: words are cement, glue, link, tinder, explosive--all at once.